Arcarius reached 70 without a penny to his name. He didn’t have his epic mount, regular, land based, until he was 68 or so. This is the World of Warcraft. Not the Farm of Auctioningcraft. So I did what any gamer does. Play. Battlegrounds, do quests, explore areas, get wierd new pets, level them up, and, like any good altoholic, keep my alts, and my wife’s characters, rolling in the cashflow and material goods that a high life demands.

But what about Arcarius? Pshhh. He’s a Hunter. Hunter’s can earn cash in busloads, right? Well, that’s if they’re in the farming business. Farming for cash gets old faaaast. I’ll farm if I’m killing mobs for xp. At 70 that’s over. So I’m not a farmer.

Arcarius got the money at long last for his epic land mount. He did all those quests he’d never gotten to in SMV and NS at 70 and raised the balance of the cash (after robbing peter and the alts) for his flying mount. He’s only got the regular flying mount now. Whenever there is a need for 300 flying he’ll worry about it. Miners and Herbalists benefit with fast flying mounts. (Stormsoul (Herbalist) and Msaker (Miner) both have them. Skinners (Arcarius) can be slow about it.)

But here’s how the Shattered Sun Offensive changed my life.

I can do about 12 or 14 of those quests and earn the busloads of cash I should have been.

I start in Quel’Danas. There’s 8 right there. Collect that mana dust. Zap those guardians. Kill demons. Kill the Sunblade guys. Get ley line readings. Collect ore from the Naga. (To which I can now add freeing Greengill Slaves.) Bomb the boats. Bomb the demons. Whew.

Portal to Shattrath and run the next batch. Get the latest Sunfury Attack Plans in Netherstorm. Collect Mana boxes in Blades Edge. Go to Hellfire and Destroy the Portal and kill Fel Elves. Go to Nagrand and measure floating fires. That’s 13. I can add to that Mana dust from skinning, but that’s not what I regularly do. And there’s a few more too. (Ogri’Where? Skettis?)

Anyway, I can do a lot of dailies and I’ve just paid for not one, but two more epic mounts (training and the actual mount) for Greenclaw and my wife’s Itarilde.

4 Responses to How the war changed my life.

Yep, SSO has paid for some serious upgrades in gear and gems, and mats for advancing professions, etc., for my paladin tank, and a couple of swords for my rogue so he can help raise cash faster, too.

Running them all on two characters is time-consuming, but profitable. Makes me start thinking my hunter alt should level up and partake, but he’s only 61 and it’s probably a little late in the game for that. Plus, that adds more time for dailies and takes time away from pally tanking instances, so maybe not.

Still, it’s neat to run around the Isle of Quel’danas with either character now and have the Shattered Sun NPCs fawn all over them. They may suck everywhere else, but my paladin and rogue really get the exalted treatment out there right now. Nice touch, Blizz.

I haven’t managed to get quite enough for the training and fast flying mount yet — aforementioned expenditures having taken a huge bite — but we’re working towards it. Priorities, ya know.

I completely understand where you’re coming from, I have 3 characters over level 60 and none of them have their epic land mount, and one of them has been 60 since months before TBC even came out. I also don’t use the auction house much, and most of what I gather goes to leveling up my crafting professions. At this point I’m just going to try to save up all the money I get from Outland quests on my way to 70 and hopefully I can make enough before I hit 70.

Flying mounts are a different issue entirely, but I’ll wait for one of mine to hit 70 before I start worrying about that. I’ll have to keep the SSO dailies in mind for when I need to start saving up for that. Good to know I’m not the only money making n00b (who funds all his alts instead of his main) in the blogging world.